I met Julianne through our love for zombies, not vampires. Julianne has a story entitled The Treehouse which is in the newly released Darlings of Decay zombie anthology. Julianne’s story is available for download in Darlings of Decay for Free at Smashwords.

I asked her to share with our readers more about why she wrote this story. Read more below.

The Treehouse: An Inspiration

Julianne Snow

When the chance to be a part of Darlings of Decay came up, I jumped at the chance. What a great opportunity to collaborate with just women who all write in the Zombie genre. Once my acceptance of the opportunity was solidified, I had to decide what I was going to include.

I knew that I was going to submit an excerpt from my first novel Days with the Undead: Book One – that was the easy part. But what else could I include to potentially seduce new fans? Then it hit me: The Treehouse.

In 2012, a good friend who happens to be a big fan of mine and an avid blogger was running a week of Zombie fun for her readers and she asked me to contribute something. Naturally being the Zombie fan that I am, I said yes.

The Treehouse came out an idea I had during a dream. The dream itself centred on the question: who is better equipped to survive a Zombie apocalypse? As I already had a series that dealt with adults, I wanted to take a moment and focus on a group of children.

The story itself jumps right into the action and chronicles one specific moment of potential escape. I won’t spoil the story and tell you if they made it or not, but I will reveal that no characters are safe in anything I write. The reason for that lies in the fact that survival, especially when faced with hordes of the Undead, is going to come down to one’s resourcefulness and the will to persevere. Those two characteristics can be inherent in anyone, young or old. Heck, sometimes the ones you never thought would make it, do. But then, that can always come down to dumb luck as well…

So I hope you enjoy The Treehouse. It’s a short story that I am still drawn to and you never know when I may write more in the saga.

And here’s a little excerpt to tease you into reading the rest!

Excerpt from The Treehouse

It walked with a sickening limp. The accompanying noise was akin to the grinding of teeth, only louder. Much louder. It was a sound that reverberated inside your head, warning you of its imminent appearance.

A voice snaked out of the darkness at me. “It’s comin’ this way!”

It was Billy. Stupid Billy.

“Shhhh! It’s gonna hear you!”

The response was barely above a whisper. Too quiet for poor Billy to hear and likely too intelligent for him to understand.

The grinding noise seemed to get closer. Out of the corner of my eye I could see it. Everything about it was frightening. The slack, waxen face. The left eye drooping out of the socket and laying half eaten on the discoloured flesh of its cheek. The gore pocked clothing relaying the message that it had eaten – recently. The worst sight was its left leg; the skin had been flayed off of most of the lower half and one of the bones was broken. The sound that we were hearing was the scraping of the ends together as it limped awkwardly in our direction.

We didn’t have the best hiding spot but sometimes you have to make do with what is around when you’re on the move. Technically we were just on the opposite side of a large planked fence, but the fence was broken. It looked like a herd of elephants came through a section just a few feet down from us, but we knew what it really happened…

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I’d like to thank Julianne for being on my blog this week. She graciously provided me with 2 articles to share with you guys. I’ve had a blast reading her posts. I hope you have too. Be sure to read her earlier article, Julianne Snow and Days with the Undead.~ally

About the Author

As the only girl growing up in a family with four children in the Canadian countryside, Julianne Snow needed some form of escape. Her choice was the imaginations of others which only fostered the vibrancy of her own. A voracious reader by the age of 7, she tackled the classics along with many others while her friends were reading Pascal’s Sweet Valley High series or Stine’s Goosebumps books. She devoured King, Koontz, Christopher Pike, Robin Cook, and Marion Zimmer Bradley along with many more.

Her literary loves have expanded to include the works of Ariana Franklin, James Rollins, Gregoire Maguire, Jonathan Mayberry, Jeffrey Deaver, Diana Gabaldon, and Kathy Reichs along with the myriad of talented independently published authors she has discovered and in some cases, befriended. The horror and forensic/crime thriller genres top her list of favorites, but she can never turn down a good science fiction, fantasy or mystery read. Julianne’s first full-length foray into the publishing realm follows a group of friends as they attempt to survive their Days with the Undead.